Page 3 of King of the Dawn

I wanted to lay in bed with her but couldn’t.

The wedding was this evening, and there was a lot left to do, and many more dragons left to slay. I had tasted blood in the water, and I would not stop until the very last man was in my grasp, screaming in agony for what he had done to my wife.

I tucked her hair away from her as I leaned down to kiss her temple. “I’ll make it alright, Eve. I swear it.”

There was no task, and no vow more sacred than that.

I straightened as I combed my hair back, and squared my shoulders, ready to face my new allies. I walked down to the office, delighting in the smell of smoke and meat that lingered on my clothes.

It was the smell of fucking vengeance, and it was sweet.

I walked into my office – the one that linked to the arboretum. I should stop calling it my office, as much as it was our space. Mine and Eve’s. It was our new “common area”, and what now passed for a family room in this ancient house.

“Yuliya,” I called to my right hand.

My sister who sat at my desk with a pair of scissors. She was cutting a folded piece of paper with an evil smirk on her long face.

“Yes, isoveli?” She used the Finnish word for big brother.

“I want every single one of the men who harmed my wife strung up, beaten and burned,” I snarled. “I want their heads on a fucking platter and presented to my wife as a present. I want to decorate the walls with their blood.”

“That’s dark.” That came from the funny little Murphy boy. Sean, I think. But it was hard to tell. The leprechauns all faded into one for me. “I like it.”

I grunted and didn’t take my eyes off my sister.

The Murphys were competent men. They were good fighters, and as far as I could tell, were bringing the Boston Mafia out of their foundation of crime and creating a legitimate business - mainly with the help of the girl: Saoirse.

If I could sit down, and truly look at my mission - which was to shift the paradigm of organized crime within the United States - the Murphys were good to have beside me. But they were linked to the Greens. While the Green boy, Eoghan, was trying to create a legitimate business, I would never forgive his bloodline for what they did to my sister, and later, what they did to my Evie.

That was two precious jewels that the family tried to smash. I would not allow them to have a third.

My eyes darted to my daughter, sitting beside her Green – that yellow-haired Alastair with eyes as blue as a fucking cornflower. I was just waiting for him to screw up so I could bury him six feet under.

My sister unfolded the papers in her hand to reveal eight perfectly cut out human silhouettes.

“I’ll go to Green tomorrow, and see what he knows,” said my sister, as she stood and went to the fireplace.

“No!” I bellowed, coming to my feet. “I want you nowhere near that fucking family.”

Yuliya lifted her eyebrow and turned her eyes towards my son-in-law. She smirked at him, and he smiled back.

Alastair shrugged, placing his hand on my daughter’s shoulder with a possessiveness that made me want to punch him in the throat.

“Too late,” Yuliya chuckled. “Isn’t that right, beloved nephew-in-law?”

“Have you forgotten what the Irish did to you?” I reminded her, not caring that Alastair was here, and caring even less that I was surrounded by Irish. I did not care that Eoghan declared to be my ally. What his family did to Yuliya would never be forgiven. “You’re not going within a hundred miles of them!”

Alastair had the good sense to look chagrined. He hadn’t been in the country when the Greens kidnapped, starved and beat my sister. He wasn’t around when they strung her up in the docks for me to find, broken, bleeding and near the brink of death. I had checked, and double-checked that fact. If he had been, I would have poisoned his tea.

But that didn’t purify him of the sin his family had committed against the only person who had mattered to me at that time.

Yuliya had been a pre-teen, and already a fucking warrior.

“Those potato-sucking bastards can’t be fucking trusted, and you know it! With their blood oaths, secrecy, and bullshit superstitions!” Rage boiled in my limbs. An old, dormant hatred for all the Irish bubbled up into my throat again.

I had failed to protect my sister once. I would not do it again. Over my dead body.

“That’s rich coming from the Bratva,” one of the Murphy boys snickered, before my sister cut him a look that made him go silent.

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